Step Up Your Own Game to Lead Others

So far, so good, right? After all, a happy, smiling client is what being in a service profession is all about… isn’t it? Well, not exactly.

I mean, yes, we want happy clients and we want definitely them to feel that the time, money and effort that they’re investing in us is being well spent, but measuring our success solely by the happiness and results of our clients is the quickest way to ensure that we’ll lose heart, burn out and, in all likelihood, end up quitting the profession altogether.

Just like the thousands upon thousands who do exactly that every year.

And surprisingly, it’s not the poor quality trainers and instructors who decide that it’s time to call it a day and quit. No, it’s the most motivated, most passionate and most dedicated of the profession who, after doing exactly as they were trained to do and helping others to achieve their goals, decide that they’ve got nothing left to give. So they quit, and the reasons they give for doing so are many, yet surprisingly similar.

“I’m just too tired”
“I’ve lost my passion”
“I’m not enjoying it any more”
“I’m struggling to pay my bills”

And, the most common reason to quit of them all “I don’t have any life outside of work!”

Make no mistake about it, quitting or even thinking of quitting comes from not taking care of the one thing that matters most in the trainer/client relationship.

Ourselves.

You see, it’s all fine and dandy saying that we’re super motivators and that we really add to the lives of our clients, but that’s only a good thing if we can do that without taking away from our lives.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “You cannot help the poor by becoming poor yourself” and this holds true in more than just the monetary sense.

If you have no passion, you can’t help people find theirs.

Ditto for motivation, energy or, indeed, any quality you can name. If you don’t have an abundant store of it yourself, then your ability to help others is greatly reduced until one day, just like an overdrawn bank account, you find that when you most need it, there’s none left. Your credit is all dried up.

At that point we’re of no use to anyone. Not the client and certainly not ourselves.

That’s the point that we take our most cherished dreams of making a difference, put them all in a box and move on to pastures new, convinced that this personal training ‘thing’ just wasn’t right for us.

That’s the bad news.

Yet, that’s not the way is has to be. In fact, if you take Lincoln’s quote and reverse it you’ll find that the answer to this problem is very simple.

Very simple indeed.

You help others by becoming rich. Not just in money (though that’ll be a likely result of doing what I’m about to explain) but in time, in passion, in energy and in motivation.

In fact, the more of these things you have, the more you’ll be able to give away without weakening yourself.

But how do you get them?

Easy!

There are five steps to follow that, if you follow them all, will make you the most passionate, motivated and successful trainer around and, if others results are anything to go by, the wealthiest too.